The Women from BJWCF

We had the pleasure of
hosting a “lunch and learn” session for the Boston Jewish Women’s Community
Fund last week. The purpose of these sessions, I was told, was for the
women in this giving collaborative, to learn “up close and personal” about one
of the places where their generous contributions were making a difference.

We naturally approached
this session thinking we needed to do a “show and tell” for our guests.
After all, this is a significant donor group and we needed to impress
them. What emerged was quite different. Within minutes of arriving,
these women set us at ease and we understood almost immediately that this was
not a group who wanted to hear a lot of perfunctory expressions of gratitude.
They wanted to dive into the substance of what we try to accomplish and
offer questions, insights and observations to help us succeed.

What followed was a
passionate discussion about the ways training and information about addressing
complicated mental health issues for seniors could change daily practice to
give confidence to line staff. They were most intrigued by the ways our
maintenance staff was able to learn coping behaviors for the most difficult
aspects of their jobs--for example, carting away boxes of “treasures” (old
newspapers, coupons that expired a decade ago, broken knick-knacks) from a
hoarder’s apartment, knowing this was a necessary step in keeping that person
safe. But not content to simply absorb the information, the women were
quick to offer ideas to expand the impact and engage in steps we can continue
to take to advance our practice.

As we planned this session, we stepped into the funders’ shoes to
consider what approach to take. We know that some funding decisions are based
on numbers: x
number of people served, X number of dollars saved, etc. Other funders
decide based on mission - they fund what makes THEM feel good. Our goal
was to offer both so that BJCWF could see the impact of their grant from both
perspectives. We certainly got the sense that regardless of their giving
orientation, each of the members of BJCWF left JCHE feeling good about the
gift.

So while they came to
lunch and learn, and we to “teach” (and lunch!), by the end of the session any
observer would have been unable to distinguish the teachers from the pupils,
and although the grant money was long since allocated, we certainly walked away
the richer.